Yummer Reading

Movie Menus: Recipes for Perfect Meals with Your Favorite Films

Villard, 221 pp., $16.95

Francine Segan is either a frustrated actress who loves to cook or a frustrated cook who loves to act. She just can't separate food and drama. In a more pedestrian effort than her swanky Shakespeare's Kitchen (see right), this cinema-inspired collection takes its cue from the hits of Hollywood. Some of the same methods are at play here as with the Shakespeare book: quotes from the inspirational sources, menu suggestions, tips for creating the complete party. But this collection runs the gamut from rarefied confections of the gilded age, as seen in such films as Sense and Sensibility and The Age of Innocence (Queen Victoria's Cherry-Almond Cookies to Victorian Tea Sandwiches), to the questionable likes of Mock Apple Pie (which Segan couples with a quote from the Tin Man to Dorothy: "Come along, Dorothy. You don't want any of those apples").

The collection of recipes calls to mind some of Jane and Michael Stern's cookbooks, which have always been as much historical and sociological tomes as collections of recipes. And in this regard, Segan succeeds. I can think of no good reason why anyone would actually prepare (much less serve to unsuspecting guests) a beverage named Bug Juice, but you gotta admire a woman who dug up the recipe while pondering the perfect punch to imbibe while screening A Bug's Life. This lady knows from movies and is crazy about food. Or is it the other way around?